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The Demos ThinkTank recently published an interesting analysis of the Twitter conversations between the Metropolitan Police and the public following the vicious murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

Twitcidents

The report authors, Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller, compiled almost 20,000 tweets that included the tag @MetPoliceUK from the week of the Woolwich attack.

They broke down what information people were sharing online, when they shared it and its value as a source of information.

Major incidents of whatever form – disasters, sporting events, terrorist attacks – now inevitably stimulate a massive reaction on Twitter.

These Twitter reactions tend to be very diverse but typically include the sorts of tweets characterised in the wordle I’ve assembled below:

The question that the Demos report tries to answer is whether there is any value for police services in making sense of this surge of data in real time when confronted with the challenges of a major incident.

The challenges for the Metropolitan Police from the Woolwich incident were many and varied, including:

Arresting dangerous assailants.

Investigating a murder which took place on a public street.

Rapidly assessing terrorist risk and possible further incidents.

Making themselves available for investigation following the use of firearms in a public area.

Public Safety and public reassurance.

Gathering intelligence on the inflammatory and confrontational response from the English Defence League.

Community relations

As you can see, this list could go on and on – so is there really value in police taking time out to analyse tweets about the incident sent to their @metpoliceuk account?

The Twitter response

One of the first challenges is to remove and ignore the large proportion of tweets which are fake – that is, sent from automated “bot” accounts. In the case of the Woolwich incident, Demos found that 45% of the 19,344 tweets they analysed were produced by a single bot network propagating the following message:

Online crime

However, on the actual day of the murder over a fifth of tweets sent to @metpoliceuk were reports of a possible crime on social media.

The most common type of tweets in this category was the referral of social media content itself as evidence about alleged or supposed on-line and off-line crimes, typically instances of threats, bullying and racism.

Once the nature of the Woolwich murder became clear, tweeters passed on information to the police about possible Islamaphobic plots and threats of violence.

Organised petitions

Another large proportion of tweets (23.2% on the day itself) consisted of systematic attempts by large bodies of people to appeal and petition the police via Twitter to influence their policy. There were two main petitions.

The first was a systematic campaign calling for the arrest of a UK-based Pakistani politician accused of inciting violence in Karachi – which did result in a Met Police investigation.

The other was a campaign to the police to release more information about the Madeleine McCann investigation.

Conversation/engagement

One in nine Tweets to the Met Twitter account on that day were direct requests for police information or action.

Some of these were reporting entirely unrelated crimes and incidents, while others wanted further information around events in Woolwich particularly whether the suspects had been arrested.

(Of course, in the recent Boston bombings, social media was used extensively as the suspects were at large for several days following the terrorist attack.)

Sending off-line evidence

Perhaps most interestingly, one in 40 tweets contained what the Tweeter considered as legally relevant, including eyewitness accounts of a wide range of crimes.

A small proportion of these tweets included potentially very useful intelligence:

Conclusion

The report authors conclude that this surge in social media interaction with police is obviously a mixed blessing; there is a small amount of potentially useful information included within a torrent of hearsay and rumour plus the inevitable general noise of people just participating in the #Twitcident without any particular motive.

It seems to me that there are two key social media challenges to police in the aftermath of major incidents:

To ensure that there is extra capacity to monitor social media accounts and ensure that accurate, timely and rumour busting information is sent out at regular intervals.

To have in place a sophisticated system to analyse tweets to provide intelligence and insight.

Although short, the Demos report is well worth reading in full.

What’s your experience of the pros and cons of social media following a major incident?

Do you keep your social media presence “close to the vest” (e.g. only allowing Public Information Officers the ability to post content) or does your strategy include the ability for all agency officials to reach the community? The latter type of presence involves letting go of control to some extent and this, of course, requires a huge leap of faith from leadership, especially in top-down oriented public safety organizations. However, this type of strategy is currently being done quite successfully.

DECENTRALIZED COMMUNICATIONS: IS THIS THE EVOLUTION OF YOUR SOCIAL PRESENCE?
In the book “Social Media in the Public Sector Field Guide” Ines Mergel and Bill Greeves suggest that a decentralized approach to social media content production is evidence of an evolved use of social media in organizations. They state that agencies that have been using social media for a while often “make social media the responsibility of everyone” and offer the benefits of this decision:

A recent decision at the Department of Defense was to abandon the role of the social media director and instead transfer that position’s responsibilities onto many shoulders in the organization. It is very difficult for a single department or division to speak with the knowledge and authority of all the business units of an organization. “Official” responses often require time and research. They frequently result in formal answers that do not fit the casual tone inherent in social media. By formally distributing the tasks and response functions to those who have the knowledge required to have meaningful online conversations on social media channels, you can decrease maintenance costs, increase trust in those exchanges and reduce the number of missteps or rounds of interaction it takes before citizens get the “right” response from your agency. (pages 110-112)

BUT HOW WOULD THIS WORK FOR PUBLIC SAFETY ORGANIZATIONS?
The Toronto Police Department provides an example of complete decentralization of social media content. As can be seen in the image below their agency’s website homepage has all the “big 3” social media buttons: Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. These buttons take the user to their official account, most likely administered by a Public Information Officer.

Choose, however, the “Connect with us” tab right below it, and their world opens up. I counted 119 different social media accounts for this organization–119! What are all these people talking about? Ideally, the content they are posting should be directly related to their position or function in the organization, and with each of the samples I chose at random, that proved to be the case. Take for instance Sgt Jack West (@SgtJackWest)—who has the title of “Traffic Enforcement.” No shocker, he talks a lot about traffic and how people can stay safe–e.g “Don’t text and drive” etc.

Motoryclist down on lakeshore Blvd, west of Kipling Ave. Emergency Services on location

Patricia Fleischmann or @caringcop on Twitter, has the title of “Vulnerable Persons Coordinator.” What does she post about? How elderly and other people who might be vulnerable to crime and natural disasters can be better prepared. She also Tweets quite a lot about people that are helping each other, organizations folks can turn to for assistance, and information from community meetings she attends. She has a healthy following of 762 people.

I could go on for while with examples, but feel free to explore of these great social feeds yourself by clicking here. So, how do they keep everyone in their “lane?” How do they keep all of these people from embarrassing the organization and posting inappropriate content? Yikes–this is scary territory!

I have been told by some of these Toronto Tweeters, that they do the following:

Before they get their social account, they are required to attend a 3-day intensive social media training class that provides them with not only information about how and why to use social networks, but also how NOT to use them. This would include Department and City posting policies.

Each of the accounts are clearly marked with the fact that the person works for the Toronto Police Department, however, they do often choose to use their own picture instead of the PD’s logo–giving the account a personal touch, which I think is critical for community outreach and engagement (it says to the public–we are people to).

Each account states that they do not monitor the account 24/7, and that if anyone needs emergency assistance they should dial 911. (See below–each person’s account information looks almost identical.)
Each Twitter profile links back to the official website.
This obviously is not a willy nilly hey, all-you-guys-go-Tweet-something strategy. Their strategy is obvious, their goals are clear; and it seems to me they are meeting the objectives of reaching out and connecting with the public on platforms that the public uses everyday.

Kim Stephens is an independent emergency management consultant and the lead blogger of iDisaster 2.0 where she writes about the benefits as well as the challenges the emergency management community and other public sector entities might face when employing new information communications technologies before, during and after a crisis. She has over a decade of experience in the field of emergency management. Her experience has spanned federal, local and non-governmental organizations: from the US Environmental Protection Agency, to the Tennessee Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management, and the American Red Cross. She has a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Texas A&M University.

Missing in action

Now social media – and Twitter in particular – is becoming the mainstream way of locating missing people.

I was slightly surprised when I reviewed five UK police Facebook pages recently and found that a third of the most popular posts related to missing persons.

@BrightPlanet were kind enough to share the data they harvested from the recent Global Police Tweetathon and I found that 330 of the 9,836 tweets from UK forces sent on 22 March this year were also about missing persons.

It’s no surprise that police use social media for this purpose though.

I’ve come across two successful outcomes in the last month.

West Midlands Police find “escaped” patient

A 75 year old man with dementia wandered away from a hospital in Birmingham last Saturday.

@WMPolice were contacted by the hospital at 2 p.m. and immediately posted requests for information on Twitter and Facebook at the same time as they started a major police search.

Less than an hour later, a member of the public who saw the social media messages noticed a man matching the description leaning against a wall two miles from the hospital and phoned the police who picked up the missing patient and returned him safe and sound.

This article is a cross-post partnership with Bright Blue Line, celebrating the global spirit of law enforcement cooperation, innovation and support.

Jump

What have I gotten myself into? I agreed to jump without even asking what it was, or where was I going to land. I think the last words replied were, “Let’s do this.” It is a leap I do not regret. The landing is amazing and the Power of 1 is as incredible today as it has ever been.

Imagine that Power of 1 for locating a missing child or globally trafficked human slaves! The Power of 1 is the global network of communications. The Power of 1 is Lauri Stevens at ConnectedCops. The Power of 1 is the March 21, 2012 Global Tweet-a-Thon. The Power of 1 is the thousands of tweets directed to #poltwt.

The policing profession is often criticized for operating in a vacuum. The hierarchical command structure and assignment specialization creates a fragmented environment that regularly compromises congruity of operations. Right hand versus Left hand syndrome.

Breaking the Chains

Over the course of a day; officers enslaved by the same static command models, in the same traditional police organizations, struggling with the same challenges and the same cultures of resistance to innovative ideas broke those chains with a simple #poltwt.

How broken were those chains? Over 200 agencies from 10 countries, speaking 23 languages posting nearly 50,000 tweets. This first in the history of social media, in law enforcement, and in the technological culture of today invited the world on a police “virtual ride-along.”

The Power of 1 shined brightly for this magnificent fraternity of blue. On March 21, 2012, we operated globally in a seamless effort. Information via Tweets was transparently shared between agencies, media and citizens. A voice across the pond also advocating this Power of 1 has prepared several great articles at Nathan Constable

Envelope Pusher

Lauri Stevens, who I’ve come to know as an innovator and envelope pusher served as the catalyst to this movement; the Power of 1. This orchestrated effort costs absolutely nothing to participate in, and the simple investment of time paid the dividends of creating history.

I’d like to believe that as a Chief of Police, I’m an early adaptor to this medium. Actually Lauri bestowed me with a title of “Twief.” I’m trusting her that it is complimentary. Honestly, after the initial agreement to help promote the Tweet-a-Thon with a supporting statement on her flyer, I was still fuzzy about the significance.

Then I saw that first tweet assigned to #poltwt and immediately realized just how significant it was and would be. That Power of 1 Tweet sparked a revolution. It signaled that law enforcement has the ability to harness the power of communications, technological cooperation and collective effort on a singular area of emphasis.

Get Wet

I’ve posted before that Chiefs of Police in social media are like cats in cold water. Scary to watch as they enter, but doable. Efforts like the Global Tweet-a-Thon help warm the water in the social media tub.

If I was to encourage law enforcement to hop or tip a toe into the waters of social media, I simply need to refer to the Power of 1; #poltwt. Read for yourself. A body of knowledge has been developed for best practice policies for taking the plunge into social media.

The waters are no longer murky. People like Lauri Stevens and many others around this globe continue to push and practice the best of what working together through transparent and immediate information sharing produces.

He sent a picture of himself holding a piece of paper simply reading “I Beat Cancer.” I asked my PIO to post it to our Facebook with a prayer of thanks. It went viral reaching almost a million people.

While Beyoncé and the Lebron James draw a million daily likes over posts about breakfast jelly, we serve in a mid-size city in south Louisiana. The Power of 1 post in giving thanks for this officer stretches beyond that simple paper sign.

What might a cop from Cajun Country have in common with a 12-year-old boy from the UK? The Power of 1; #SuperJosh. This hash tag connects me to a social media superstar loved and supported by cops literally around the world. They even dance the gangnam for him.

Another Brother in Blue, @SgtGaryWatts serves his community, and through social media, supports his friend #SuperJosh who suffers neuromuscular disabilities. Yes, I think it’s the Sergeant @gangnam999 doing the dance moves.

Cats to Water No More

What have I gotten myself into? A wonderful community of amazing people no longer limited by time, distance or communications. Sincerely engaging one another through the various social media platforms builds a network, a community, and an opportunity to step out of that tub, and dive into an exciting ocean. The Power of 1; #poltwt.

Did you participate or follow the World-Wide Virtual Police Tour? What are your thoughts about policing in social media? How often should we do #poltwt (more than once per year?). What should we do differently? Please contribute your thoughts on these questions below.

A quite amazing thing happened on Friday 22 March that brought the law enforcement and policing community closer together. The world became a smaller place thanks to social media and a special event. But putting all the charts and graphs aside, what did it actually achieve?

The global police Twitter day, known by the hashtag #poltwt, was developed by Lauri Stevens and involved more than 200 law enforcement agencies and individuals which is quite an achievement. The stated purpose was to highlight the work of officers around the world but also to show how they are using social media to support policing activities. This was done from 8am on 22 March 2013 around the world.

For me it was an exciting day that brought with it some highlights and was a show of strength by bringing officers together from many countries. It was another step on the path of demonstrating to colleagues what can be achieved by using social media, and showing that it really is now part of frontline policing. Discovering and using social media is a journey and within any organisation people will be moving at different speeds along the road. Events such as the global Twitter day can help to accelerate things for some people.

Reading the tweets from around the world was fascinating as it highlighted both similarities and differences. There were some common themes:
• everyone wanted to make a difference and improve lives
• conversations and communication were seen as essential
• residents wanted to know more about policing and local officers
• photographs of dogs and horses are always welcome!

The interest in the event was evident in the tweets that were received and the level of involvement people wanted to have. In Greater Manchester Police we saw people sending message throughout the day, asking questions during a two-hour session, and being keen to learn more about what each of the neighbourhood policing teams were doing. It was great to see not just police officers taking part. Local people wanted to get involved by making their voice heard. This was also seen with the latest community reporters taking their time to go on patrol with GMP neighbourhood officers. They were then able to add their own perspective onto global police twitter day.

It was 24 hours that brought the world of policing and law enforcement closer together and helped to develop the conversations between officers and the people they serve. I am sure there will be more to come now that the world has been made a little smaller.

About ConnectedCOPS

The vision behind ConnectedCOPS is to enhance law officers’ ability to succeed with social media tools by providing insight, encouragement, education and the overall support required. It is also to promote the insightful thoughts of the law enforcement social media visionaries by providing them a voice on this blog.